Can solar farms and crop farms coexist?

Transcript

James McCall: Solar production the total way in the midst of the US truly started to decide on up around 2012. As solar truly changed into mainstream, there changed into so much more concerns of land use changes.

Ravi Sujith: Within the event you examine the sort of land that’s been converted for solar installations, over 60 %of those landscapes are converted croplands.

Chong Seok-Choi: They both require flat areas with reasonably numerous sun, and that’s by way of transmission infrastructures. So on this context, it is able to be significant for us to determine a mode to combine farming and solar power production in order that both can exist in cohesion.

McCall: Argivoltaics is a term for the colocation of solar and agricultural activities, reminiscent of grazing, crop production and also ecological restoration.

Sujith: Argivoltaics has multiple benefits, both for the farmers and for the solar developers.

McCall: If the solar developers can show they're the use of the land to 1 of essentially the most crucial best benefit, they are ready to then access more land to develop more solar. After which the other big one is the farmer and the landowner themselves.

Sujith: Even if you happen to lease out your land for solar development, that you just can still have an income generating activity like growing crops or sheep grazing.

McCall: There’s also the local communities that stand to take good thing about that. It can potentially kind of create a pollinator habitat or prairie restoration.

Seok-Choi: Common practice used to be once that other folks would leave the bottom bare for solar construction, but that’s now no longer the way it’s done anymore.

Sujith: Covering the land with vegetation, they are ready to remain away from erosion and use it as a chance for soil carbon restoration.

McCall: Currently the total way in the midst of the United States, there are roughly 530 (as of July 2024) argivoltaic web sites. It’s a roughly fifty–fifty breakdown between pollinator habitats and solar grazing.

Seok-Choi: At the current, there’s a large listen on letting sheep graze lower than solar panels, because they don’t jump on the panels, they don’t prefer to chew on wires or anything else.

Sujith: Integrating the sheep grazing may support soil nutrients. So we just completed a 5 year know about the total way in the midst of the midwestern U.S. Tons of these areas have high carbon depletion because of intense agriculture. And we truly found that managed sheep grazing can truly support old carbon and soil nutrients.

McCall: And so if it’s still the identical cost as mowing grass and we are ready to supply a benefit both to the local grazer and potentially the environment, why now no longer to make it kind of a portion of their standard practice.

Sujith: So overall there is kind of an emerging consensus that solar grazing has some value in many of those landscapes. Nonetheless, there’s reasonably numerous unknowns if you happen to are talking about crop production.

McCall: Of those 570 argivoltaic web sites, most efficient 40 are truly curious about crop production. And fairly numerous those web sites are these small scale research web sites.

Sujith: So very first thing to agree with is what crops do better, in what climates or what geographic locations? That’s a an exceptionally powerful question, because some crops may do well lower than shade while some crops have significant yield losses lower than shade.

McCall: So even two kinds of the identical tomato may respond very in a distinct way to the sort of microclimate that’s truly created by the solar panels. After which weather patterns are in point of fact no longer constant annually. So it’s very not easy to make some generalizations for kind of when and where crops would really be on hand.

Seok-Choi: But except that, crop production requires reasonably numerous modification the total way in the midst of the engineering and design.

McCall: We truly should raise the panels high enough in order that they don’t get shaded or we should always spread the panels a lot similarly apart to essentially get traditional farming equipment through there. In general, the total changes that should occur come at a tradeoff of cost otherwise you’re getting less energy. Consequently we are seeing a little more hesitancy the total way in the midst of the U.S. market.

McCall: We’re now no longer going to do every system design in every single place, but where and when does this truly make sense, and why would different stakeholders do that? As we see climate changes reminiscent of reduction in access to water and kind of increased temperatures, that there may be this may integrate solar. A primary example of it truly is wine grape production in California, where temperatures are currently too hot to essentially produce certain varietals of grapes. And in order that they’re having to place into effect shade structures. And so why now no longer also produce solar and make some money off of that shade structure.

McCall: Uhm, there’s also this broader should grow food a lot closer to population centers.

Sujith: So currently we are taking a look to determine what configurations of argivoltaic systems are suitable for our urban areas. We’ve set up an experimental system at Ambler Campus of Temple University, and which is ready to suit into an abandoned car car parking zone or something in a city. So the foundation is to ascertain, like how the solar arrays that can okay be affecting these crops in alternative routes. It'd truly support yields of leafy greens. So we may okay be in a position to produce an extra cycle of lettuce. But we still should make bigger the know about to other areas to appear how the impacts are different. The subsequent 10 years may be providing reasonably numerous information on different kinds of integration. Which is ready to well be applicable to different parts of the area.

Seok-Choi: And it is my dream. Where we are ready to point at a map and say, like if we put panels here, the climate can be altered this manner so we may grow this crop.

McCall: So this now no longer a one size fits all pancea solution. It truly requires some thought. It truly requires reasonably numerous different stakeholders to get their standpoint in there. But more solar production may assist reach climate change goals and so it’s a matter of necessity to confirm that we use this land for its very best benefit.